In that moment, in that single sublime moment, she discovered how very wet this child was. She held out one hand, dripping with urine.
“Ugh!” Morrah exclaimed. She breathed a short incantation, and her hand was clean and dry once again.
The child gurgled and beamed at her.
“Well,” she said, her gaze caught by the adoration in the baby’s eyes. “Children do get messy. We must clean you, too, little one.”
The house elves had shot upstairs ahead of her, and were waiting to show them off when she reached her bed chamber.
“We have many cloths that can be used for swaddling,” Oakleaf said, holding up his finds.
“Not that,” Morrah said, discarding one piece after another. “Nor that. The cloth of gold will scratch its skin. Oh, Oakleaf, not my court dress!”
“It is soft,” the elf said apologetically. “And absorbent.”
“Use this, Honorable,” Tansy suggested. She held up the remnants of the blue silk.
Morrah hesitated.
“What better use?” the little female asked. “The doll-baby does not need it. My children would have liked the softness on the bottom.”
“You are right, Tansy,” Morrah said. “I hadn’t planned on diapers. I hadn’t planned on any of this.”
The child was a boy, she discovered when she unwrapped him. She gave him a bath in her scrying basin, as no other appropriate sized vessel was available. So many things she lacked, since she hadn’t been planning to raise a human child. She was now, of course, she thought in satisfaction, knotting a ribbon from one of her many orders around the makeshift diaper.
“I should seek out his real mother,” Morrah said, picking up the baby. Once again, the little one nestled into the crook of her arm as if that was his proper place. “Oakleaf, prepare for the ritual of seeking.”
The two wood elves hesitated.
“Well, what are you waiting for? A girl has lost her baby. What if she wants it back? What if she doesn’t mean me to have him?”
“If she wanted to be found,” Tansy said reasonably, “she would have waited on our step and said ‘please take him.’ But she didn’t. She doesn’t want him, and doesn’t wish to say so out loud. But you do.”
“Ah,” Morrah said. “You are right. I do. Well, then, he needs many things. We must go and get them. For Nethan.”
“Is that his name?” Tansy asked.
“Yes. He must not go unnamed. He is not a doll or an effigy, but a real child.” Morrah smiled down at him. “You are Nethan.”
The child kicked and waved his fists amiably.
“Will you leave him with us while you visit the market?”
That seemed like sense. Morrah began to hand him over to the two little people, but was reluctant to let him go.
“I’ll take him with me,” she said.
Shopping for a child was an unprecedented experience. Townsfolk who had treated her with respect and awe before changed to indulgent and friendly at the sight of a child in her arm. They seemed astonished to see her do something so ordinary. For once, Morrah reveled in the ordinary.
Morrah suddenly found herself the focus of a torrent of advice, good and otherwise. She listened to everything, even absurdities, with the reserved smile she had always kept for ministers out to further their own particular interests. Like the courtiers’ needs, she planned to balance the townspeople’s advice as it pertained to Nethan’s well-being.
As for the child, no one could look at him, asleep and wrapped warmly in blue silk cloth, and do anything but gulp deeply and lie.
“A beautiful child, Honorable,” they all said.
Morrah didn’t care. She loved Nethan deeply, whatever he looked like. He loved her back with all the devotion she had ever wished for. She hated to be parted from him at any time. He hardly touched the ground during his first six months of life. When she permitted him to crawl it was upon a priceless silken carpet she had received from a weaver whose life she had saved.
She made inquiries widely, offering a reward for anyone who knew of a mother missing her newborn. No true replies. A few treasure-seekers tried for the reward, of course, but a mere glance in the truth mirror told her they were lying. She sent them all away with a tongue of flame speeding them hence. In truth, she was glad. She loved Nethan with all her heart. Here was the little life she would shape. One day he, too, would be a great wizard, beloved and respected by every nation.
Nethan slept most of the time, waking to cry in a thin voice like that of her cat’s. Morrah watched him sleep, needing little herself. She wondered at the soft, warm breaths that stirred the soft lips. At first she was appalled by the constant wetting and soiling, leaving the elves to clean it up, but then she started to envy them the look of relief and gratitude the clean baby gave them. Those happy coos ought to be for her alone! She took back the task. She had had worse jobs in her life. The elves tittered at her behind her back. She didn’t care.
One night in Nethan’s ninth month, Morrah became aware of little lights dancing past her eyes as she sat at her table eating supper. She squinted, concentrating on using her second sight, and the lights coalesced into human forms no larger than her hand. Pixies! At last they had managed to work a hole through the magical shield she had placed around her tower. She could figure out where the weak place was later on. In the meanwhile, she had to get them out as soon as possible before they caused too much mischief. She rose, seeking about her for her staff.
“Oakleaf! Tansy!”
“We see them,” the house elves chorused. A crash echoed from her work room. The pixies had already upset something. A loud “Rraow!” told her that they were also tormenting Whisper. Morrah whipped up the household guardians. The ancient spirits, embodied as blue-white mists, seeped out of the very stone of the building.
“Kill them swiftly,” Morrah ordered. She swept upstairs to Nethan’s nursery.
The baby lay in his crib, crying. The pixies pinched his plump flesh, leaving red marks. He looked about him in confusion. Morrah became aware that he wasn’t looking at the tiny lights that dipped and swooped over him. Every assault was a surprise. He couldn’t see them! She grabbed him up.
“You’re safe, little one.”
“Mama!” he wailed.
The stream of pixies increased. They had hated her ever since she was part of a triumvirate of wizards who drove them out of the forest of Calum, the country to the northeast. Whether she could force them back through the mystic door to the land between times in which they had been imprisoned alone bothered her less than the realization that Nethan did not have the fairy sight. It was almost the least of the senses possessed by natural magicians. If he couldn’t see those beyond normal sight, then he probably couldn’t understand animal speech, nor feel magical energies . . .
“Oh, no you don’t!” she said, reaching out to snap a large blue pixie in two. It had tried to land right on Nethan’s head. Being broken in half destroyed the pixie’s presence in this world. It dissolved in a blaze of diamond-bright light. Nethan didn’t flinch or blink. He couldn’t see them.
It took all night and half the next day to stem the flood of angry invaders. When it was over, Morrah placed Nethan back in his cradle. He had been bewildered by his mother’s waving and shouting. He showed no sensitivity to the power flying about him. That would explain why he had never shown any awareness that there was anything different about her and the elves from the people they met in the market.
She scryed in the enameled basin for his true soul. His did not contain the marks even of an apprentice.
“What is that?” asked one of her colleagues who visited one day. Hervin appeared before her in his astral form, a translucent image bounded by a circle chalked on the floor. He pointed to Nethan, who sat on the floor building a tower from Morrah’s alchemical equipment.
“That is my son,” Morrah said proudly.
“Ugly little ferret.” Hervin frowned. “He’s spirit-blind. Did you know?”
> “I did,” Morrah replied. “He was a foundling.”
“Well, what good is he if he lacks power?”
“What good is he?” Morrah asked indignantly. “What good is any child?”
“No, dear, what good is he to you?”
“I love him, Hervin.”
The elder wizard looked amused. “That’s a tiny word to saddle yourself with sixty years of caring for a magic-less tot with the face of a toad, dear. But, please yourself.”
Once he had departed, Morrah did sit down to think about his words. Nethan’s lack of power did not matter to her, and would never matter, however long he lived. The love of that little child was a spell that gave her the youth she had never had.
Morrah had been old before her time. Blessed with the power when she was very small, she found herself a pawn of fate. To keep her power under control she had had to grow up and forsake all young-woman things. Here was something she could not and never would be able to control completely. How Nethan grew, what he showed interest in, what he liked to eat, what made him laugh, were all out of her realm of influence. He turned over her pots, pulled the cat’s tail, tasted a variety of herbs, some quite dangerous, all with the same cheerful optimism that nothing bad could happen to him. That randomness was a joy that had been missing from the constructed children, and from Morrah’s life in general. For a woman and wizard who had always planned events to the last detail his childish abandon was frightening, but intriguing. She felt that living backwards, from wisdom to impulse, made her a stronger mage.
Nethan, for his part, explored his world with an ever-growing curiosity. By the time he was a year old and taking his first steps, Morrah dared not leave him unsu pervised lest he cause some fresh disaster.
“Mistress, this message comes for you!” Tansy chirped, dropping a scroll in her lap.
She had no sooner unfurled it when she heard a crash and a yowl that sent her running into her work room. She found Nethan sitting staring at a heap of glass shards she recognized as an alembic that had been made especially for her from the rose-quartz sand of the far desert. Morrah’s hands shook with rage. How dare he destroy something so precious and rare that she had crossed a world to bring home?
“Mama?” Nethan said, offering her a hopeful smile. He pointed. “Pretty!”
Morrah pulled herself together. He couldn’t know and did not understand the power inherent in the object he had just casually destroyed. She had to forgive him as she had never forgiven herself for mistakes. Reasoning with him at this age was pointless. She had never not known how dangerous or important something was, and envied this child its innocence. He only understood his own point of view. It was her own fault. She had to learn not to put temptation in its way.
“Yes, Nethan,” she sighed as she caused a small whirl-wind to pick up all the pieces and deposit them far away from the tower. “It was pretty.”
Morrah learned that no matter how many toys she provided for him, her things always seemed more interesting. She learned to form a magical tether preventing each from being removed from its place except by her. Her heart was torn two ways when he sat and cried with frustration at not being able to dislodge precious crystal phials containing water from the seven great dark wells. Her friends at the market were sympathetic but amused.
“Of course you must get all of your good things up out of his way,” the weaver’s wife said, with a laugh. “Wait until he starts climbing!”
Trouble as Nethan was, Morrah reveled in the joy he took. When a lightning storm lit up the sky over the town he clapped his hands and shouted “More! More, Mama!”
Dutifully, she caused the clouds to crash together over and over again, as he laughed gleefully at his own private light show. He had no idea as to what the use of power cost her, but she never grudged it. To Morrah there was no cost that shouldn’t be paid for Nethan’s joy. Her responsibility to him was to provide the best life possible, and with her resources, that was a fine life, indeed. If she went to bed exhausted and couldn’t so much as scry the weather for the next week, what of it? It made Nethan happy.
She took to her old studies with new eyes. Her life’s work had always been to serve others. She now made her focus to ensure that Nethan would be able to do whatever he wanted. She would find a way to make it happen. It caused her to view the ancient texts in new ways. Morrah sought to expand her own horizons simply by trying whatever came into her mind, instead of sticking by the old caveats and prohibitions. It took time to shed the ways of a lifetime, but she felt the years fall away from her. In her early life all things need to have had a purpose. How liberating it was to try things just for fun.
Following Nethan’s example, she learned to enjoy events as they happened, just to watch them unfold. His experimentation with words as he learned to speak led her to play with the ancient spells, toying with the rhymes and bringing them up to date. Wait until she read the revisions to Hervin! They were half as long as the traditional chants, and twice as effective. What good was this spell-less toad-child? Why, he was revolutionizing magic, and all without casting a single spell!
“And so, my lord begs your help, Honorable,” the page stammered. “He fears that his daughter is in the hands of the Troksir.”
Morrah pursed her lips. With a quick swipe of magic she pulled Nethan away from the bookshelf and the Tome of Animals he was yanking therefrom. “I am familiar with the Troksir,” she said. “If Princess Imrie is their prisoner, I will find her.”
“Thank you, Honorable,” the page said. He retreated from her study as quickly as he could, away from the ugly baby, the two hovering elves, and the formidable woman in red silks.
Morrah put her chin in her palm. It would be easy to spy upon the Troksir. Those troll-kin were surprisingly beautiful to behold but greedy and evil by nature. The spell to see into their realm was straightforward, made more so by her recent tinkering. Entrusting Nethan to the care of the house elves, she began her preparations.
The circle on the floor must be a particular shade of deep blue chalk. If properly drawn, no demon had ever been able to break free of that ring in all the history of magic. She lit candles of yellow for clear-sight, red for love, and gold for strength, and added a brimstone-heavy incense to her thurifer. These would lend her extra power if she had trouble maintaining the vision, which was really an insubstantial door into the Troksir’s realm. Morrah sat down at arm’s length from the edge of the circle, and drew power from deep within herself to open that door.
If Imrie had been taken, she would be in the hands of the Margrave, the Troksir’s violent master. Morrah steered her vision in the direction of the greatest concentration of evil power, the black, fork-topped mountain. Beneath it was the Margrave’s fastness.
Through soil, stone and wood her vision moved. She passed unseen among guards in helmets bearing spears. Troksir needed no armor with that thick hide of theirs, gold bright and studded with colored spots so like jewels that it had led many unwary treasure hunters to their doom. Morrah searched the entire fortress from attic to dungeons, yet saw no sign of the princess. Only one place remained: the audience chamber. With a flicker of thought she saw it. The Margrave sat on his throne made of his enemies’ bones, hand propped on fist as if he was a human being, listening to several bright-skinned henchmen speaking. Was that a girl at his feet? She leaned close to look.
“Pretty!” Nethan crowed. He lurched forward into the room, making for the glittering figure of the Margrave.
Where were the house elves? “Not now, child! No!”
Morrah sprang up to catch him, but her old bones were too slow. He dashed over the chalk line, breaking the spell.
Suddenly, wizard and child burst into the Troksir’s midst. The Margrave sprang up from his throne.
“Kill them!” he shouted.
Morrah threw up a shield spell. The first three Troksir that ran into it burst apart like rotten fruit. Nethan sat stunned at her feet. Morrah gathered him close to her, keeping him from
straying beyond the sheltering enchantment. Now, where had she seen that girl? There, at the foot of the throne. Was that Imrie? It was! The young woman’s face was dirty and bruised, and her lovely violet dress had been torn and soiled, but she had the wide green eyes and decided nose that had been in the royal family for generations. She reached out a beseeching hand to Morrah.
More Troksir threw themselves upon Morrah’s defenses. The bodies momentarily blocked her vision. She pushed forward, and found herself treading upon gob-bets of flesh and pools of ochre-colored blood.
“Ich!” Nethan wailed. “Messy!”
“Kill them!” the Margrave bellowed again. Behind her the doors of the audience chamber were flung open. No time to waste. Morrah pressed ahead. The Margrave sidestepped and seized a sword from one of his soldiers. He brought it crashing down on the top of the shield bubble. It bounded away, but not without doing damage to the spell. Morrah felt the energy weaken. Her attention was drawn two ways, managing the enchantments and keeping Nethan near her. He trembled in her arm.
Closer . . . closer . . . there! Morrah let the spell drop for a moment as she stretched out her staff. The girl, her wits still about her, grasped hold of it and was pulled hastily in. Morrah had to let go of Nethan to recast the protection. Just in time, the glowing globe reasserted itself in her mind’s eye. Jagged-bladed weapons clattered inches from her face, and fell to the ground. Now, they must escape!
She sought about her for the broken line that represented what was left of her circle. It could not be too far away. If she could just reach it, she could redraw it.
Nethan clung to her leg, crying, as a hot red light enveloped them. The Margrave’s wizard was at last responding to the threat. The fire spell drove Morrah to her knees, but she could not let Nethan or the princess be harmed. The new incantation for protection sprang to her lips. She recited it before the second spell could broil them. Cool air, like a shower of snow, fell around them. The Troksir wizard looked furious. Morrah wasted no time. She swept her son up in one arm and ran to the broken blue line on the floor. The girl stumbled behind. The Troksir wizard sent a golden arc of power after them, but Morrah swiftly redrew the line with her staff. The spell shattered in a shower of flame that stopped inches from their faces.
Children of Magic Page 3